System Administrators (“Administrators”) at large corporations must support a vast array of technological assets, virtual and physical. Administrators are usually part of a simple operational hierarchy, sometimes based on the asset type they support. For example, server administrators maintain servers, while storage administrators support large memory devices.
System administration requires a significant number of human resources. Administrators focus much of their time resolving infrastructure incidents, implementing changes and requests. Resources are often wasted to locate causes of failure and to react to sudden and unexpected maintenance or execution problems. Unfortunately, many times these human assets are restricted by these reactive tasks. Administrators are not able to detect patterns between events or provide comprehensive solutions that would provide better ways of maintaining the connected infrastructure, either due to the reactive nature of work, or because they are limited by the human ability to make complex inferences from large data sets.
Furthermore, many big organizations maintain multiple and redundant data systems, which increases the complexity of data management. Further, over the last few years, there has been a rapid increase in the interconnectedness of devices and in the volume, velocity, and variety of data they produce. Administrators, therefore, find it increasingly difficult to effectively maintain their assets without understanding the complete picture of the technological asset landscape.
Currently, many organizations take a silo approach to managing and maintaining their technological assets. Administrators are divided into homogenous groups with similar objectives, usually by similar technologies or functions. The interconnections between these groups are usually limited and only increase on an ad hoc basis. Any co-relations made between events or concepts that apply to multiple groups are made by Administrators, not software or management systems. Such connections are usually limited to a localized level, and also limited by human ability.
While the architectural hierarchies of Administrator groups can remain the same, how the Administrators engage with the same data landscape has to evolve. A need exists for a suite of related analytical tools and techniques to create a single holistic picture of an increasingly connected environment.